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Lotta posts by me today, I am a pretty regular journaler, and I guess I have switched to this one.

So even before I started up with PB and Paleo before that, I decided to start eating pastured meat whenever I could. I have a smallish chest freezer and found a farm to buy from that is pretty reasonable if you buy in quantity. Late last year I bought a mixed quarter of beef (cuts from both ends) totaling about 85 lbs. The beef was terrific, the only problem was that I was away on a business trip when it arrived. My long suffering SO, who would gladly be a vegetarian if she had to look at raw meat, was forced to unpack it (it was all Cryovac packaged and frozen), lug it into the cellar and into the freezer. She was not happy about this.

It took six months to use it all and in June it was time to get more. This time I ordered another mixed quarter and a side of pork ( again, about 85 lbs each). I had some concerns about it all fitting. But I'd be there when it arrived this time, right?

Well no actually...one of our customers had a problem and I needed to fly out last week to help resove it. Sure as shooting the stuff shipped the day I did and arrived while I was away. SWMBO was not amused by this. But she was a trooper and managed to fit it in the freezer. I finally went down to look at it. It looks great! Apparently she dumped the boxes pell mell into the freezer and since it was so full it wouldn't close she stacked heavy stuff on the door until it did. When I removed it the door sprung open like a Jack in the box! Lol!

I went to the store and bought a whole bunch of plastic bins that fit just right and organized the meat by type so it will be easier to manage. Tonight I will make her a nice filet and give her a back rub as thanks.

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Well my SO and our son got back from their day out late and had already eaten, so the filet didn't happen and she was dead tired so the backrub didn't happen...sigh.

But I did make a hamburger and mixed vegetable stir fry that was very good and very PB.

I felt good after the the walk and the exercising. I'll figure out what level I am in all of the exercises soon, likely I'll be a at the low levels in everything but squats. I have big muscular legs kept in better shape than my upper body, likely due to the walking that I have done, pretty regularly nearly all of my life.

Today of course is my day at the Outlaws, my SO's parents. I need to navigate the rough waters of people who typify the SAD and who like to see me eat. So I have to gracefully dodge the chips, bread and pasta that will abound and try to stay on course. I am going to bring a bottle of the red wine over that I like so I can drink that instead of beer or vodka tonic (their summertime drink).

Eating properly today will be a good dress rehearsal for the week, I am traveling up through New Hampshire, then into Canada for business, so it will be life on the road. This used to scare me when I was on conventional low fat diets, but I think it will be easy with PB. Eggs and bacon for breakfast, hold the toast, a big salad with steak or chicken and some slab of meat for dinner, extra side veggies, hold the spud. I do like desserts and maybe one day I'll be able to indulge a bit, but not now. I'll just nurse my glass of wine.

Here's a funny quirk of mine. I love red wine, I am not a connoisseur at all. But I like most of the wines that other people who do know a lot tell me are good. I've gone to lots of tastings over the years and when folks talk about this wine has a hint of cherries or it's buttery or has high herbal notes, I can always see why they would say that, but I would not be able to come up with it myself. I just can't verbally articulate nuances of taste verbally by comparing the experience to some other taste.

Anyway, I do really like red wine, white? Not so much. But as much as I like red wine, there is one thing about I don't like. Stemware. In particular the classic red wine class with the long delicate stem and the great big bowl. I would rather drink it from a coffee mug or a small tumbler. I normally don't order wine at restaurants, but lately, when I have I have asked that it be put into a water glass. I get strange looks, but I don't care.

I've never been able to determine just what it is that I don't like about them, maybe it is how fragile they are. Maybe it is the memory of my Italian friends whose Papas made wine and drank it from water glasses with their meal. I suspect that my not liking the conventional glassware has to do with the ceremony and viticultural pomp that (to me at least) obscures the enjoyment of a good glass of wine.

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Today, I am happy to report went very well, and according to plan. I didn't cheat at all, I actually don't really like the term "cheating" here. I suppose that you make good choices and you make bad ones. Given the choices I had today I made good ones. I passed on all the chips and bread and desserts, I had two glasses of wine (in a cup that I liked).

Even what I did eat, ribs and summer squash, I ate reasonable portions. I feel good. Nourished and not bloated.

This is going to be a challenging week for me, travel restaurants, business meals, irregular schedules. I'll have to make good choices.

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Today I'm going to start pretty regular intermittent fasts. The 8 on 16 off method, so I'm not doing breakfast (besides coffee). I'll do it on Monday's for sure and probably after any days where there were food choices that weren't so good. :-)

Today was lift heavy things day, I haven't adopted the PB workouts yet, except where they overlap what I have been doing. Ah, what have I been doing? I have downloaded some personal trainer apps and am using them. Right now I am about a third of the way through getting up to 50 pushups, 50 Situps and 50 squats. Plus I do some more targeted muscle exercises for my arms and shoulders. The whole thing doesn't take more than 30 minutes and except for the extra arm work and the lack of pull ups, it is pretty much in line with PB.

I will have to devise a chinup bar somewhere and start. Theres an app for that too! :-)

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So far the fasting is going well. Dinner last night was done at 8:00 pm so lunch at noon will be the full 16 hours. I feel hunger, but it isn't distracting. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I sorta like feeling hungry. I don't really like to say that because I know there are folks in the world, for whom feeling hungry is not a choice like it is for me. So I will ammend my statement, I like feeling hungry knowing when and where I will break my fast.

It's a slow day at work... the day before I leave on a trip is always surreal.

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My first day of IF is done. It reminded me that the last "diet" I went on was one by a bodybuilder, I can't remember his name, dang! But the diet was really not a whole lot different, carbs were very limited but protein wasn't, but it was low fat. I lost a bunch of weight, about forty pounds but couldn't deal with being hungry all the time. I tried a variant called the warriors diet, It was the brainchild of a man named Ori Hofmekler. One of his ideas is that you eat little or nothing during the day, but you eat essentially unrestricted at night, within a four hour time frame. You have to eat healthy foods, not trash, but the quantity is unlimited.

It was interesting and I tried it for several months and did lose weight. Like I always do, but since it was a diet, when I stopped I gained all of the weight back, like I always do.

So now I really am excited that I have learned what foods are not good for me, and what are. I feel more positive long term. I can see me eating this way for the rest of my life.

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Another day on the road, horrible actually. Our dumbass Company in Canada didn't prepare their documents properly so we were stopped at the border and not allowed entry. Because we needed a work permit to do training. We ended up going back to the usa and an an hour out of our way to find a hotel to stay at. :-(. Sucked big time.

Didn't eat all day except for some beef jerky then we found a restaurant still open at 10:00 and I had a nice steak and a lot of wine. I'm considering giving up drinking entirely since I can't seem to get it under control. Sigh...

So it wasn't a good day at all, still, apart from the alcohol I didn't go off of my diet.

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I am home again, tired and frustrated. We couldn't get the work permits in a reasonable time to allow us to cross into Canada, so we headed home. We left at 9:00 in the morning and I got back to my town at about 7:00 PM. I was angry, tired (I didn't sleep much the night before) and hungry. We didn't stop for lunch, late in the afternoon I got a packet of beef jerky.

To top it off my SO was hosting a small party of her girlfriends and asked that I stay out until 8:30. So I stopped at the local park and I walked a walking path for an hour and a half. Despite being very tired, it was the best thing really. Typically I would've found a bar and eaten a nasty meal and had too much to drink. Instead I walked in the beautiful weather and watched the setting sun. Not so bad.

When I got home all the guests had left (the reason it ended so early is that these women all brought their children to play with Davy and they all had to get home to put their children to bed). There was leftover salad and chicken that SO had bought (she doesn't cook). So I ate a little, too tired to gorge, despite being on short rations and hungry.

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Hey, Im really liking your journal. I think it is a great idea to keep them mind on being primal. I think have=ing regular envolvement in what you're doing is crucial to following it and it's success.
Al I can say is keep up the fantastic work and this wonderful journal.

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In other news: It's been a weird day, I skipped breakfast, not because of intentional fasting, but because I overslept and didn't want to eat any of the quick and convenient food choices (Carbs) available to me. So I packed up two hard-boiled eggs and some of the chicken from the SOs party and ate it at lunch.

I took a long walk at lunch in the drizzling rain, the route I often take if I walk at lunch. It was nice (despite the rain). I'm still a bit bummed about the trip and a walk in the rain somehow was consoling.

I'm still really tired and not really hungry, even though I haven't been eating much. Lunch was all protien, but not a lot.

Dinner will likely be a lot of vegetables. I haven't been having many these past days on the road and I wants some!

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I slept soundly for the first time in several days. Though I woke up early. 4:00 AM ugh... I did compulsively weigh myself again and got good news 256.2, nearly a half a pound lower than yesterday morning.

I'm feeling pretty good physically, but I do have to report in all honesty that my mental state is pretty F'd up. The long and the short of it is that a relationship that was important to me has ended, and I'm hurting. I don't want to go into too many details, but it was a relationship that was entirely innapropriate on a whole range of levels. It was destined to fail really, we managed to remain friends and had a fun but frustrating romantic tension. She accompanied me to Canada (she is a co-worker) and when that trip ended badly we were frustrated and I had too much to drink and made an asshole of myself. The long ride home was tense and bitter, we barely spoke. I apologized and she accepted, but it is finished. I suppose it is for the best, but it was a humiliating end.

Normally I would console my self and drown my shame and sorrow in a binge of beer and sugar, I deserve this right? Or would it be punishment, "Here A-hole, eat this 1200 grams of carbohydrate!". But interestingly, now I really don't feel like eating at all.

Since alcohol played a role in both the beginning and end of this debacle, I have to seriously reconsider my drinking. Since Mark is a proponent of a glass of red wine occasionally, I switched to that from my normal drinks, beer and Irish whiskey. But no matter the drink, after one or two, I would allow my self more, and after several I would lose the ability to make good decisions.

So I must conclude that it is not good for me, and like bread and sugar, also not good for me, I should stop ingesting it. I am saddened by the prospect, so I will not make any grandiose and final statements, but for now at least I'm not drinking. Maybe later, when I am at a healthy weight for awhile and my life is running on a good productive path, I will see if I can enjoy an occasional glass of wine.

As for consoling the hurt, I am going to take a very long walk and watch the sun rise.

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I'm glad you could console yourself with walking and not food. Hang in there.
If alcohol makes you behave in ways you are embarrassed for later, I think you are wise to give it up. It is hard enough to be our better selves, without throwing obstacles in our way.

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Thanks for the reply, in this situation it wasn't anything bad, just I spoke my heart and it wasn't appropriate and it blew up in my face. In Vino Veritas.

But it's good advice, which I will follow.

:-)

I don't normally post specific meals, but for breakfast I made a killer omelet with pastured eggs, squash blossoms and a 2 tablespoons of fresh ricotta cheese that all came from our CSA box this week. Yummy! Topped it with some nice salsa and tucked in!